What Motivates Us - A Follow Up

Ever notice that when you buy a new car you start seeing that car everywhere? Same make, same model, same colour... it just feels like every where you go you bump into someone else driving that exact same car. This week has been somewhat like that for me. No, I didn't buy a new car.

A week ago I wrote "What Motivates Us" and the reaction was instant. My little rant struck a chord with a number of readers and traffic to my blog increased significantly. I received comments, tweets, e-mails, and I  realized that what had been bottled up inside of me for a very long time was a common theme amongst many of you.

This week a couple of things happened. First, I started reading Jeff Jarvis' book "What Would Google Do?" and in it he discusses Dell's previously poor reputation for service and what the company did to turn things around. What it boils down to is that instead of dismissing the rumblings of it's customers, Dell began to embrace them, reading blog posts, forums, e-mails, etc. and quickly dispatching employees to address the issues which incredibly turned disgruntled purchasers into champions of the Dell brand. This got me thinking about an exercise a former employer went through by hiring a human resource consultant to interview management and a sampling of staff members. The consultant asked, what I presume was, similar questions to each group regarding their perspective of the HR policies / practices of the company. I was not chosen to participate but I understand that there may have been a huge gap between how the staff and management scored the company on several levels of employee satisfaction. The result was a report given to management (only to management) and a subsequent e-mail to employees, roughly some time in April, outlining measures that would be implemented. The e-mail contained a number of items that would benefit management and a number of items that would benefit staff, the plan was to implement these changes over a period of about 6 weeks and we were given hope that change was coming. I kept that e-mail. The items on the management side of the equation were swiftly implemented. From time to time, I'd return to my inbox and open that e-mail reading the list of items that where coming our way, and as summer drew to an end counted 5 long term employees with roughly 45 years combined experience (at our company) who had abandoned ship. Two years later the employee side of the equation was yet to be implemented.

The second thing that happened this week was iTunes downloading episode 154 of net@night with Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur. This week's guest was Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. Tony has just released a book called Delivering Happiness A Path To Profits, Passion, And Purpose. Zappos.com is an amazing success story and the success has been driven by the company's number one priority, company culture. You must listen to the interview! There are a number of things that Tony says that will flick the light switch in your head. Perhaps the one that most resonated with me was "... a lot of companies have, they might call them core values or guiding principles, but the difference is for most  companies it reads kinda like a press release that the PR department put out and they are very lofty sounding and maybe you learn about it on day one of orientation, if you are a large corporation, but then it becomes this meaningless plaque on the wall that no one pays attention to, for us we wanted to come up with committable core values..." Tony goes on to explain how Zappos.com offers new hires a chance to quit after their first week of work with $2000 and their earned wages to that point! This is because they don't want people who are only there for a pay cheque (sound familiar), they want employees who are there for the company's long term vision... 

This post IS directed at those in a position of power, but not as a cheap shot. It is with hope that you will take this seriously. Look at the comments of the last post, not my comments, but those of others who felt compelled to respond. Listen to episode 154 of net@night. Read "What Would Google Do?". Read Tony's book and take a hard look around your organization, people are not nearly as motivated nor as happy as you might like to believe. As Tony says "I think 50 years ago people had to choose between maximizing profits and making employees or customers happy..."

Scott Adams Weighs In On Ideas vs. Execution

I am a huge Scott Adams fan! Who in their right mind doesn't love Dilbert? If you don't you've probably never walked in his shoes. In a recent blog post Adams examines the idea of a Dilbert Movie and dissects what the detractors are saying. I like the post, and I think there is a bunch of insight in the few hundred words used to make his point.

"How about a movie about two gay cowboys? Done! Academy Award!"

Go for it Scott! I'd love to see a Dilbert movie, and hey if you need a geek to play the part, cameo appearance, random guy using smartphone? ...just saying.

Suicides Prompt Taiwanese Company To Double Pay Of Chinese Employees

There has been a fair amount of press lately about Foxconn a Taiwan based company with manufacturing facilities in mainland China. The company manufactures much of the hot consumer electronics products that are coveted world wide, including the Apple iPhone and iPad. The BBC is reporting "Ten people have killed themselves at its plant in Shenzhen, in southern China, which employs about 400,000 people. Three more apparently tried to take their own lives." It's unbelievable that people are pushed to these tragic endings, however as others have reported 10 in 400,000 is well below the national average in China. In my humble opinion it's highly likely that the reaction by Foxconn to increase wages is more the result of pressure from Apple and other companies who use their service, than out of concern for the employees. To qualify for the pay rise, workers will first have to pass a performance test lasting three months (the old carrot and stick again). The company has also hired psychiatrists and installed safety nets on buildings, seriously!

What Would Charles Schultz Think?

Stumbled upon this via ars technica and couldn't help but wonder if this is what Charles Schultz was dreaming about when he drew the lovable beagle on top of his dog house dog bowl in hands, er paws... I think this is exactly how he envisioned the World War One Flying Ace! Available now on Xbox Live Arcade, for 800 points or $10.

 BTW, traffic is way up this weekend. Thanks for visiting!

The Power of MooTube...

I had to share this. Cows Ice Cream is a local (Prince Edward Island) based ice cream shop that has turned into a recognizable brand and is very popular with locals and tourists alike. Besides ice cream they also are known for their parody of common memes on t-shirts and other novelty candies and bovine themed trinkets. They are now taking the parody to the next level and it's quite amooooozing :)

What Motivates Us?

This is quite possibly the most difficult post that I've created in my 3 years of blogging, mostly because it hit's very close to home. I've typed and retyped it several times. My first inclination, probably my emotions coming into play, was to make this an in your face kind of post aimed at those who make the decisions, who are in the position of power and affect our productivity and sense of worth (you know who you are). However that is contrary to who I am, and it would do very little for those to which this post is truly aimed at. This is aimed primarily at those who we've left behind (you know who you are), particularly because I think that those who are at the top and have the real power to affect change will quickly dismiss this as radical talk from a disgruntled former employee. They are truly from the old school, and quite frankly it works for them and their bottom line. It works only for them, I might add, and I'd hazard a guess that it has worked very well. The people who make it work for them (the real assets)  drag themselves into the office dreading every step, put in a good days work (and then some) and leave feeling broken down and hollow, there is no personal satisfaction, as there is no appreciation for their creativity let alone recognition of their efforts! A pay cheque is not recognition of your efforts! A pay cheque alone does little for your self worth. While those in the position of power preach team work, they do not demonstrate it, they prefer conformance and compliance from their employees rather than engagement, personal satisfaction, and a sense of purpose. The profit motive has long been un-moored from the purpose motive, if there ever was one.

The video below includes a talk given by Career analyst Dan Pink, and was brought to my attention by a friend who, like I did, had the pleasure of working for a company that simply has no idea as to what motivates us. The old carrot and stick method was  used selectively, we were expected to feel as if we were lucky to be part of such a successful organization and that we should be thankful. We were not engaged in the process, appreciated for our creativity or encouraged to think beyond the task at hand. We often got the stick but there was very little carrot.

In the video Pink talks about us (the collective us), those who work in cognitively challenging occupations such as the world of IT. I encourage you to watch it, several times perhaps, and truly think about what is going on in your place of work. As for my friend and I, we have moved on to organizations that look at the science and understand what motivates us and I am thankful for the lessons which I have learned. I now have input, a sense of accomplishment, ownership, and purpose, I am no longer just a smaller, better smelling horse...

The Story That Won't Go Away - Zuckerberg Grilled Over Privacy Policy

The New York Times runs down the grilling of Mark Zuckerberg by veteran reporters at an on-stage interview at the D8 conference. Zuck apparently took off his trade mark hoodie during the interview apparently feeling the heat of the questioning. At 26 years of age it's got to be tough running one of the largest plays on the internet... but perhaps the heat will mature him in a hurry.  The Facebook founder is said to have looked uncomfortable during questioning and skirted around answers. “Maybe I’m in denial,” he said. “I think our goals haven’t really changed that much at all.” He then added: “I just think we are a lot closer to the beginning than the end. As companies get bigger people expect you to slow down and do less crazy stuff. I guess I hope we never do that.”

Facebook Making Divorce Lawyers Job Easy...

Let this be a lesson to braggarts and cheaters everywhere! It's not only potential employers who are checking your out online. According to CNN the first place that divorce lawyers are turning to in aid of their clients is Facebook. In the words of Ken Altshuler a lawyer from Maine, "Facebook is a great source of evidence," "It's absolutely solid evidence because he's the author of it. How do you deny that you put that on?"

I've got news for you Ken... it's not that hard to update the status of someone in your own household if you really want to, my kids are masters at it, and unless the dumb schmuck is stupid enough to leave photographic evidence I wouldn't count on it being "absolutely solid evidence". None the less this does, once again, highlight the fact that more people are paying attention to your social media updates than you might imagine and while I don't condone the actions of the cheating spouses, I do think that people need to realize the potential implications of what they post and/or at least be aware that nothing is truly secret in the world of social media. Even though it's a mighty big pool, you are bound to be found if someone is really looking, as you are truly putting your fate in your loosest lipped friend's hands :) 

Follow Up To Quit Facebook Day

The CBC has some interesting insight into the reaction to Quit Facebook Day. Apparently some 31,000 Twitter users vowed to quit FB with "Quit Facebook" being a trending topic yesterday. On the other hand Facebook  faithfuls poked fun at the notion with comments like "Today is 'Quit Facebook day' … Tomorrow is 'Oh shit I deleted my Facebook' day … And Wednesday is 'Create Facebook day.'" (I like this... very witty)

Canada's Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said last year that some of Facebooks's policies break Canadian federal privacy law. "One of the biggest concerns we raised was the over-sharing of users' personal information with third-party developers who create popular Facebook applications such as games and quizzes," Stoddart said at the time.

May 31 - Quit Facebook Day

There are a handful of high profile IT celebrities who are vowing to, or who have already, quit Facebook in protest of the perceived lack of interest (I'll give them some measure of reasonable doubt) by the company in keeping it's users personal information secure.  In addition there was recently a report of a leaked Mark Zuckerberg text conversation from the early days of Facebook that made light of the type of data that users where supplying the site, this has raised many eyebrows. 

In further protest a group of users have declared May 31st as "Quit Facebook Day", however I think the majority of Facebook's 400 million users seem to be either oblivious of the fact that their data is not necessarily safe in Facebook's hands or they are just not concerned. Regardless, I am doubtful that this movement will gather enough traction to put the site in real jeopardy, though it has prompted the company to respond with changes to the site allowing users some measure of opting out. Word is that it's only because of an internal uprising by Facebook employees that these changes where implemented. Personally I typically don't feed that much information to the site, other than feeds from this blog, my twitter account, or recently an experiment with foursquare...  I have to say that I am a little torn between what I think is the right course of action for me and the real advantages of belonging to the site, it has it's merits. 

Any of you plan on quitting?